Tamar Weinberg was saying in 2017 that marketing without data, ideas just based on intuition, wouldn’t cut it anymore.
That would be a nice way to address ‘data apathy’ in 2021. Now, if you don’t have enough data about your marketing activities, it’s more like ‘walking in the dark,’ or shooting into the sky, hoping to catch a bird.
But among a couple of other things it could cost you, I’d just discuss its impact on your business expenses, and how you can stop this leak. That’s where it matters the most, right?
From the moment your company is discussing its next marketing and sales campaigns, these are some of the key daya you should track, if you’d want to spend only on what matters.
Audience Research
Now, it’s easy to just settle with an assumption of who you think your buyers are, but that could get really costly. It’s okay to have some ideas, but you’ve got to validate that first.
Here’s an example. Let’s say your company deploys accounting software to help companies manage their payroll.
How do you know which kind of company might not have a payroll system? How do you determine the decision maker in the company? What differentiate companies without a payroll system, with those who have? These are critical questions you’ve to answer before moving forward.
Apparently, that’s what will guide your targeting, and even outbound sales outreach. That saves you the time and money that would have gone into chasing the wrong audience.
Where’s Your Audience?
I was interviewing for a digital marketing consulting role a couple of years back, for a company that runs a chain of gyms across Lagos, Nigeria.
The client was bent on taking some ads to Twitter, but unknown to them, Nigerian Tweeps won’t even blink at a gym ad running on Twitter. It may work with an influencer instead. That’s similar to many mistakes businesses make.
It isn’t about what you think as much as where your audience spends their time, and how they consume marketing content – down to the kind of authority figure they follow.
And even when you do have this data, ensure you track the performance of every activity you’ve got going on. Plus the native analytics some of these platforms provide, you can also explore how tools like SproutSocial, Brand24, and others like them can help.
And it’s not just about advertising, but also for organic social media activities.
You may have seen a couple of businesses spend heavily on producing videos on YouTube, when they’re audience hardly have YouTube apps. The more you understand about your audience, the less you waste on platforms with no value to your business.
Companies could be fine to just use LinkedIn, or Instagram, or a selection of a few. It’s hardly useful to be everywhere.
Tracking Data on Your Website
Almost every company I’ve come across has Google Analytics installed on their website, but almost all of them also just have it there for nothing.
Do you pick any insight from what’s happening on your website? It’s your online shop, right? So, it’s got a lot to offer, as far as your business growth is concerned.
For example, the Source/Medium data would tell you which of your social channels, campaigns, or marketing platform is bringing traffic to your website. That’s just one in tens of such deep data you could find, and that could help you narrow your marketing efforts to only what works.
I’ve also seen other tools such as SEMRush help conduct excellent competitor analysis, traffic analysis, and better grasp of what’s going on on your website.
Online marketing has made it easy to only focus on marketing activities that count, but if you aren’t paying enough attention to every data you have available, you will be wasting a lot of funds.
If you’re struggling with digging into your data, or making a sense of what you have, we have dedicated research and data plans that will provide you with the exact information your business needs.